


the burden of dead faces

by oriflamme



Series: robots. robots everywhere [12]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dysphoria, Empurata, Give Starscream Emotional Support Round 2: Faceless Boogaloo, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Past Abuse, Plug and Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-20
Updated: 2017-07-20
Packaged: 2018-12-04 17:24:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11559897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oriflamme/pseuds/oriflamme
Summary: It's one thing to catch glimpses of an enemy mech amid explosions in vicious, hotly contested warzones - and quite another for Wheeljack to work with him, up close and personal, and have the time and inclination to study Starscream's face long enough to realize thatit isn't a real face.Empurata!Starscream AU.





	the burden of dead faces

**Author's Note:**

> There is a _critical_ lack of Wheeljack in Starscream's life in TAAO, so this one's just gonna have to exist in that hazy in-between place where canon is a vague thing off to one side that we nod at and then gently ignore for the duration.
> 
> Can be considered loosely related to [Mutual Elements](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6465475), but I wasn't writing that one with empurata!Starscream in mind at the time.

It doesn't jump out at you. Not right away. You've gotta know what to look for, and on the Autobot side of things, they didn't see a lotta the empuratee crowd. Rare exceptions took Autobot colors - mechs like Whirl, who would have been neck deep in the Decepticon camp if he hadn't fragged off Megatron himself, and people who noticed the Decepticons careening off the rails in time to defect - but the lion's share went 'Con and stayed that way. Back in the day Megatron's recruitment drives had whole segments dedicated to raiding government facilities and reuniting long lost body parts with their owners.

(People will do a lot to get their hands back.)

It won them wild, fervent loyalty in places like the Dead End, where mechs deemed [useless] or  [defective] by the Functionists got left to rust. Once the Senate caught onto the fact that former empuratees kept turning up with their old faces in propaganda vids, more facilities started melting down stolen faces. By the time the war kicked into high gear, anyone left had to make do with generic, template-based stuff. Most of the medics and frame designers who _could_ do the detailed work had to save their supplies for rebuilding people. Who's got the time or motivation to pay out for a custom face when there's a war on?

Starscream, apparently.

-

Wheeljack never got a good look at him, before. Don't get him wrong - after a couple million-odd years of increasingly attritional warfare, ballooning the ranks on both sides with wave after wave of made-to-order mechs, and just as quickly _decimating_ them until everyone was too scattered and thinned out to hold it together, you recognize the people who survive long enough to crop up like bad pennies. Kinda hard not to recognize the Decepticon command team, in particular.

But it's one thing to catch glimpses of an enemy mech amid explosions in hotly contested warzones - occasionally on a screen when he postures and brags and preens through one of the Decepticons' transmissions - and quite another for Wheeljack to work with him, up close and personal, and have the time and inclination to study Starscream's face long enough to realize that _it isn't a real face._

_-_

Starscream's notorious for changing his frame every vorn or so. His ego's the stuff of legend. Usually it's not too drastic a change that Autobot intelligence can't identify him almost immediately after the fact: where Starscream goes, Thundercracker and Skywarp follow, and they alter their frames and take similar alt modes to match Starscream's whim whenever the Decepticons start infiltration protocols on a new planet. Monitoring the fashion statements of the Decepticon second in command isn't exactly Wheeljack's idea of a good time, but some stuff's just general knowledge. Starscream changes his frame like a human changes their shirts, and it's only _sometimes_ 'cause Megatron smashed his last body up into a shuddering pile of scrap metal where Autobot surveillance could record it. In lean times (and there's a lot of those times, the longer the war drags on and the less other species are willing to trade with anything remotely resembling a Cybertronian) it might just be a new paint job. People tend not to read too deep into it. It's _Starscream_.

And then Wheeljack goes and winds up…uh. He's not sure what to call it. If it were anyone else, he'd call it befriending him. Paranoid as he is, Starscream alternates between treating the word 'friendship' like an obscenity and like something ineffable. A purely hypothetical, frankly unrealistic thought exercise. Primus and all his fingers, toes, and Muses forbid that Wheeljack so much as _think_ the word 'amica' in Starscream's general vicinity. Never mind that they've been swapping cables and getting cozy enough that Wheeljack can't look Optimus in the optic anymore -

Well. He figures out the face, first. About when Starscream feels secure enough (secure's a strong word) to talk to Wheeljack in _Wheeljack_ 's lab, without Rattrap lurking at the door, and leans over Wheeljack's shoulder to watch him fiddle with his latest gadget. Starscream pours out a steady stream of sardonic commentary while Wheeljack keeps his frame language casual and steady; experience has taught him that any sudden moves will send Starscream pacing around the room again, his processor seizing any excuse to dismiss a year of shaky friendship and obsess over how Wheeljack reaching for a screwdriver means he's plotting against him. Wheeljack tries not to take it personally. As far as he can tell, Starscream considers himself entirely alone and barely trusts himself, let alone anyone whose name doesn't start with 'S' and end with 'tarscream.'

(Hooking up with Starscream, even with the lightest possible firewall access given, is always a _wild_ ride.)

But eventually Wheeljack needs to turn his head and angle his audials so he won't conk Starscream right in the nose, and Starscream snorts and presses a stiff kiss against Wheeljack's maskplate. And _there_ \- just for a split second, Wheeljack feels the unyielding surface as Starscream's mouth fails to respond in time. It feels like someone lightly tapping the side of his face with a hunk of cold metal, all angles and no give, before Starscream's mouth softens and presses normally. _The subcutaneous neurocircuitry's signal running slow; something's damaged in the transmitters, or in the circuits themselves -_ Wheeljack's technical mind rattles off, instantly, even as Starscream twitches and draws away with a sudden scowl. Wheeljack keeps turning his head to follow Starscream instead of his original trajectory, at a momentary loss as he stares at Starscream's face and compares it with all his previous observations. He's no medic ('cept in _dire_ emergencies, when Ratchet's too backed up to question who winds up running around in his medbay) but only two things tend to cause that kind of momentary lapse in facial movement: intermittent facial paralysis due to severe processor trauma -

\- or a face that isn't fully integrated.

-

It takes ages before Wheeljack pulls together enough evidence to confirm it. Starscream notices _everything_ , to the point of hypervigilance: even something as little as watching his face or meeting his optics for too long can set him off, and he won't stop prodding and prying and trying to interrogate Wheeljack for a motive unless Wheeljack can calm him down and ease him into his arms. The _last_ thing Cybertron needs is Wheeljack piling more stress on top of Starscream's mountainous heap of…everything.

Another mech might've been offended or put off, having to put up with Starscream's endless distrust. But Wheeljack's dug in deep (too deep, he suspects, to safely extract himself without Starscream's fragile trust imploding) and underneath Starscream's many, practiced masks for manipulation and charisma and grandstanding, what Wheeljack has uncovered is a hell of a lot of _fear_. A mech can only run on adrenaline and paranoia and a furious drive for self-preservation for so long before it strips their tires down to nothing and drains their tanks dry. Or whatever the equivalent metaphor is for fliers.

He's not fool enough to think he _fix_ Starscream or anything as presumptuous as that. But he watches Starscream, and sees someone propped up by a bunch of dangerously fragile schemes, a hundred different counters in case those schemes fall through or someone betrays him, and an unhealthy amount of suspicion that makes him chronically incapable of just accepting help from people who are perfectly sincere - and exactly nothing to help Starscream on a personal rather than political level. 'Emotional support' is probably another obscenity in Starscream's wonky version of Neocybex. He operates like he's entirely alone in the world and everyone else is just a betrayal waiting to happen.

Turns out, that's the kind of thing that draws Wheeljack in. If no one else is gonna help Starscream - if Starscream won't _let_ anyone in close enough to help - then Wheeljack'll dig his heels in and help harder. Coaxing Starscream into his lap and waiting until he stops twitching his wings and resettling his weight and just _rests_ can sometimes take up half the night, but Wheeljack has no end of projects to work on, wrapping his arms around a bunch of jumpy Starscream and steadfastly tinkering away until Starscream grumbles and buries his face in the crook of Wheeljack's neck. It's enough to make a mech feel all warm and soft inside.

(It's enough to make him cringe and shrink on the inside, whenever Optimus stares at Wheeljack, gentle and stern as he reprimands and praises Wheeljack for helping the Aerialbots in the same breath. 

Divided loyalties never feel good.)

So. He's gotta be subtle about it; walking up to Starscream and poking one of his weak points would be just plain dumb. Wheeljack thinks they're past the point where Starscream would shoot him in the back to eliminate a perceived threat, but now Wheeljack's something even more precarious - he's a weak spot himself. It's even odds whether Starscream will protect him or panic and try to remove him.

Subtle. Right.

"The orbicularis oris branch of your circuitry needs a quick reintegration cycle," Wheeljack blurts out, as unconcerned and casual as he can manage.

Starscream goes so rigid you could snap him in two. His wings stiffen before they can bristle defensively, but Wheeljack catches the faint twitch before Starscream clamps down on the impulse. Rebuilding your frame from the protoform up every couple of years must mean a lot of practice with adapting and controlling one's tells. If Starscream had less of a mercurial temper, maybe it would work better. "My, my. What _are_ you on about, Wheeljack?" Starscream asks, his voice balanced on the knife's edge between simpering and scathing. "Is there something wrong with my _face_?" 

The last word twists, drags out of his vocalizer ugly and _wrong_ , and Wheeljack can hear the  [not-face] in the sub-glyphs oozing out like sickly sweet acid.

Yeah, the Functionists liked doing that, back in the day. The whole Senate got on board with the language purges - said it made things more efficient to carve out all the clutter and standardize vocabulary - but it was the Functionists who hopped on the old empurata train and worked their magic. Claws became  [not-hands], single optic helms became  [not-faces], and from there it's just a short mental hop to put them together and get  [not-people].

He's found that the best way to salvage things when he stomps on one of Starscream's buried land mines is to just soldier through, as mild and calm as can be, and let his straightforward concern cushion the sting. Starscream's so inexperienced with receiving no-strings-attached help and support that Wheeljack tends to bamboozle him. "Probably the whole facial network could use a tune up, if it's been a while. Has the lag been bothering you, much?" Wheeljack says, carefully turning his wrist so that Starscream sees it coming from a long way off when Wheeljack folds his hand over Starscream's. Sharp claws prickle along the back of Wheeljack's hand, but hey - hand holding never gets old, and it distracts Starscream, who squints at Wheeljack's hand with (mostly) performative suspicion. Every day, Wheeljack gets better at spotting when Starscream is just going through the motions.

"Nonsense," Starscream says, waving his free hand in a vague dismissal of all Wheeljack's concern. No hand trouble that Wheeljack's noticed; they don't have forged medic levels of dexterity, but then, hardly anyone needs that level of precision. Starscream slips a coy, crooked smile on, then presses in close so that Wheeljack can't see his expression anymore, his arms winding around Wheeljack's neck. "This isn't the right face. They never are."

-

Which seems to be Starscream's go-to excuse for not letting a medic fix the lag whenever Wheeljack hints at it over the next few months. Wheeljack pulls up a few of those old recordings and checks. The alterations to Starscream's face and optics are harder to trace than the whole-frame changes, but they're there if you're looking for them.

Replacement face or not, Starscream's clearly got a lot of experience compensating for it: it's customized to the point where it _should_ calibrate well with his original facial circuits. He's mastered a whole array of well-honed facial expressions, from seething fury to disdainful boredom all the way to schmoozing, flirty smirks, with all the subtle micro-expressions accounted for in between. That's more than a lotta mechs who lost their faces to empurata ever regain - some just scrounged up a second optic and a maskplate over a basic intake, and called it good. Depending on how much spite fueled the empurata docs on a given day, the procedure often involved sawing through the old helm and rewiring everything with the lowest quality vocalizer and optic possible.

Mutilation was the whole point.

Wheeljack doesn't push the issue: pushing Starscream just makes him snap and lock up, and Wheeljack doesn't want to stress him out any more than he has to. Starscream's rate of poor life choices increases exponentially when he feels pressured, and Starscream's poor life choices impact all of Cybertron, these days, so Wheeljack's rather invested in keeping them on an even keel. But the lag's a new development, and if he were dealing with anyone else he'd have herded them into a medic's waiting arms weeks ago. Exhaustion knocks Starscream flat whenever Wheeljack persuades him to relax long enough to lay down for longer than a few restless hours, and he can't imagine what else Starscream doesn't want to expose to a medic on top of his insomnia.

So when Starscream strolls into Wheeljack's lab one afternoon, drapes himself over Wheeljack's lap, and hands him his detached face, Wheeljack does - not expect this particular turn of events. He expected _something_ , sure, since Starscream is nothing if not a sucker for melodrama. And yet somehow, he's still surprised. 

"There. By popular demand," Starscream says, slinging his arm around Wheeljack's neck and splaying himself out to take up as much space as possible. S'if Wheeljack would try to reach around him to work like this. "Please, do try to make this quick, Wheeljack. I refuse to waltz around stark naked anywhere Windblade can see," he adds, with a shudder.

Under the faceplate, Starscream doesn't have the full array of subcutaneous circuitry that should have been reconstructed when he had the empurata reversed. Instead, his helm vents frame a hollow void full of loose wires and fuel lines that have been neatly unhooked from the underside of his face. Wheeljack freezes for a full klik, all motion suspended as he looks at the optic socket, and the lone, sharp red optic that stares back at him, and then down at the mask hanging loose in his hand.

It's incredible work, actually. It probably took more craftsmanship and resources to make this maskplate function _like_ a face than it would have for Starscream to rebuild his helm with a fully integrated face. Hell, Starscream _has_ rebuilt his whole helm before - that one time after Megatron demolished him on Abassi-6 is a matter of public record. "Uh. Yeah, of course," Wheeljack says, on autopilot, as he _rapidly_ reassesses everything he knows about Starscream's masks.

He's got the gear he needs right here. Not medical grade stuff, but tools he's gathered over the years so he can repurpose them for all kinds of tasks. To reach one of the drawers he rests a hand on Starscream's waist while he leans over. When he comes back up Starscream's bare optic focuses on him with unreadable intent, and Starscream drums his claws along Wheeljack's side. "It used to be very convenient at rallies. Megatron thought it was _such_ fun at parties. I was an _excellent_ recruiter," he says. Wheeljack scrambles to match his knowledge of Starscream's moods with just a tone of voice to clue him in. "The original wasn't particularly inspiring or novel, so I've been - creative, in reinterpreting it."

More than likely, Starscream decided to stage this on purpose to provoke Wheeljack into a reaction. Starscream can never resist pushing how far Wheeljack's limits go; he'll cross-examine Wheeljack's next words down to the last subglyph. "I'll just run current through the circuits and troubleshoot from there," he says, cautiously. He can see a million and one ways for him to insert his foot directly into his intake, and he's bound to do it eventually. He'd rather have it happen _after_ he finishes troubleshooting. Instinct tells him to reach out and pull Starscream in for some good, solid hug time before getting down to business. But Starscream has a thoroughly Decepticon view of physical contact: unless he's the one initiating, it's either a trap or a ploy to _lure_ him into a trap.

And until Starscream says whether he wants Wheeljack interacting with his exposed helm at all, that's probably off-limits. Something aches in Wheeljack's spark, like a fresh knife sliding into place. It's one thing to hypothesize that Starscream suffered empurata in the past, and another to see that optic, and know that any attempt to offer comfort will just set Starscream further on defense.

He could always say _they had no right_. But he'd be preaching to the choir, here. The Decepticons wrote the book on it, and never let it go.

Focus on the work. Starscream adjusts himself by increments, his hands tracing idle lines down Wheeljack's arms and chest as he swivels his head to watch Wheeljack set up the equipment he needs. Despite lounging in Wheeljack's lap, Starscream holds himself away from Wheeljack, with only a faint tremor in his arms to show that it requires effort. "Oh, Wheeljack. You work too hard, cooped up in here," Starscream murmurs, after the quiet starts to stretch out.

Wheeljack hums. "Eh, I like my work." While Starscream angles his head and starts to tap at the cover over Wheeljack's data port array (that's a feint), Wheeljack swallows hard to try to cover the sound as he resets his choked-up vocalizer. "Anyway, can't imagine anyplace off planet we could go take a vacation that wouldn't end in disaster. How relaxing is Soundwave's commune, this time of year?" Cybertron itself isn't exactly brimming with popular tourist destinations, these days. Dragging Starscream to one of the colony worlds would be a political incident waiting to happen. Wheeljack convinces Starscream to go out on a low key outing every couple of weeks, but Blurr's place is kinda off the table. Blurr smiles for Wheeljack and glares at Starscream, Starscream complains about the words all sounding the same when one of the wanna-be poets takes the mic - and only ever hinted once at the fact that it reminds him of Megatron's poetry when on the verge of a public meltdown - and in general, it's not a good time.

"We?" Starscream repeats, drawing the word out in a skeptical, slightly indignant drawl. If he - if he had his face on, he'd raise his chin and stare down his nose right about now; Wheeljack can match that tone with the usual expression pretty easily. Then Starscream vents, long enough that it's almost a sentence in and of itself, before slumping against Wheeljack. "I. Well! I doubt Cybertron could spare either its irreplaceable ruler or its best scientist for long," he finishes, with a note of irony. 

"Yeah. That's just _askin'_ for the moon to turn into a giant mech and start marauding while we're gone. Best not to tempt fate," Wheeljack agrees, with a sage nod. It's an old joke, by this point, but Starscream still reliably hisses under his breath about how you can't _joke_ about these things where completely hypothetical, definitely _not real_ moon-alt mechs could hear it.

It lightens the mood until it's almost…not normal. But normal-adjacent. While Starscream restlessly readjusts himself (they could be here a good hour before he settles enough to sit still), Wheeljack tries to keep his finger on the mood. There's an empurelephant in the room that needs addressing, eventually. "How is all this feeling? Anything else acting up on you?" he asks, gesturing to Starscream's helm - at the hanging wires, the jury-rigged neurocircuit system that wreathes his optics and which should _really_ have more insulating layers to keep everything from tangling. He keeps one optic firmly on the faceplate as he troubleshoots it, and the other on Starscream in general, as tactful and casual as possible. Staring would be bad; not looking at Starscream _at all_ while his face is off would be just as bad in a whole 'nother direction.

"I was constructed cold, Wheeljack," Starscream says, silkily, with a sing-song note in his voice that Wheeljack can't decipher. " _None_ of it feels right. I understand it's different for you all. The ones who get dug out of the ground like tiny organic Earth cabbages." He pretends to inspect his fingertips, tilting his helm back with a haughty sniff, and then crosses his legs with a dramatic flourish as he pulls away from Wheeljack again.

Wheeljack can't resist. "Pretty sure they don't have to dig cabbages up, Star-"

Starscream snaps his fingers at Wheeljack and then points at his optic. "Look at this face. Does this face say that I _care_ about the particulars of Earth cabbages?"

"Now you're bein' rude. And you missed a perfectly good opportunity to compare us to potatoes."

" _Anyway_." Starscream rolls his optic up to stare beseechingly at the ceiling _\- spare me from Autobots and their excessive knowledge of organic plant matter_ , probably - and then almost rolls off Wheeljack's lap as he lets his weight slump away. He leans over the lab desk instead with a petulant sigh as he drums his fingers on the table. It takes Wheeljack a second to realize he's staring down at the face on the table. Wheeljack's troubleshooting equipment sends impulses through the circuitry at intervals to test that everything is responding correctly, which means Starscream's detached face occasionally spasms before subsiding back into an emotionless mask. "Ha," Starscream says, after a moment. "The wings are right. They didn't manage to frag _that_ up. Can you imagine if those incompetents had stuffed us into ground frames and told us _not_ to fly?"

On the surface, Starscream sounds indignant. Even with his optic turned and his body language angled away from Wheeljack, Wheeljack picks up on a few of the underlying notes: disdain, the usual current of emotional blankness as Starscream gingerly talks around Thundercracker and Skywarp without naming them. They've barely scratched the surface of what Megatron did and the marks he's left on Starscream's behavior; Starscream's old trine has two of its three members on Earth, nowadays, and they flat out don't speak to each other. From the way Starscream never ever talks about them, Wheeljack gets the feeling it ended messily.

Being fragged off over the thought of the cold constructors sticking him in an even more ill-suited frame is somehow safer territory, according to Starscream standards.

(Cold constructed bots made up a disproportionate 85% of both the donations and patrons at relinquishment clinics, according to at least three separate studies.)

Wheeljack takes a second to hit one of the buttons on the diagnostic scanner, so that it scans the facial circuitry and lights up trouble points with a constellation of orange light. Doesn't look like more than a few minor adjustments and touch ups - which is good, since that's about all he _can_ do without worrying that he might fiddle with something that needs a real medic to fix. "Anything I can do to help. You know that," he says, and once again has to fight down a weird hitch in his voice. He picks up a probe to remove the micro-debris from the circuits, aware of Starscream staring at him with a hard, searching focus. "So, when you find the right face, will you make it permanent?"

"I'll know it when I feel it," Starscream snaps, adamant, even as his optic slides away from Wheeljack to stare at the plain metal paneling of the wall. Tension winds its way through his frame, and Wheeljack makes a low noise of acknowledgement as he swaps the micro-probe out for a tool to make final adjustments.

Then, very carefully, he tips his head forward and presses his mask to the back of Starscream's head in a kiss. Suddenly, there appears to be a critical lack of mouths in their relationship; it's not something he can joke about, though. He dims his optics for a second and hovers there, giving Starscream time to process and respond.

Wheeljack has seen how many proximity sensors and warning systems Starscream runs in his processor, endlessly calculating and recalculating the odds that a casual touch is gonna turn into a threat. It only ever stops once they've plugged into each other for long enough that Starscream cracks and buries himself against Wheeljack like he's trying to merge their frames together instead of, y'know, the more spark variant.

Starscream allows the kiss to linger, but his right leg tenses enough to creak a little - Wheeljack can't miss it with Starscream sitting on him like this. "If you're finished -" Starscream says, his voice tight, and Wheeljack pulls back first so he can concentrate on finishing the work. He takes his arm from around Starscream too, so the mech has room to bolt if he needs space to breathe.

"Yup. One sec." Wheeljack runs one last scan, but this time the readouts scatter blue glyphs over the faceplate - as clean as Wheeljack can manage, with his setup here in the lab. He shifts his equipment away and hesitates instead of picking the mask back up off the desk.

Starscream snatches it up and harrumphs as he pushes himself up, using Wheeljack's shoulder as a handhold. Wheeljack waits for him to hop off, but Starscream swings around and straddles Wheeljack, pinning him to the stool as Starscream dumps the face unceremoniously into Wheeljack's hand. He angles his helm pointedly as he adjusts his wings. His optic focuses and refocuses in visible cycles: with all the time and effort Starscream clearly poured into periodically rebuilding his frame and face, it's clear this is a higher-end optic model, too, rather than the usual simple lenses they used to install in empuratees. One optic or two, Starscream gives him the same searching look - like he's always just waiting for the other foot to drop.

Right, then. Wheeljack's spark appears to have gotten stuck in its twisted, aching position, so he takes it all in stride and keeps what he's feeling behind his maskplate. He touches the side of Starscream's helm first, gentle as he can; Starscream shifts his weight but doesn't pull away. Eventually he levels an impatient look at the face, and Wheeljack eases off and starts reattaching it to his helm. Starscream hooks some of the more obscure connections into place while Wheeljack very, _very_ carefully attaches what he recognizes, their fingers occasionally brushing as they work around each other - this face really is a unique thing, more complex than a quick onceover can let him analyze fully. The ridge of Starscream's chest presses against him, and Wheeljack welcomes it as he watches the single optic shut down behind Starscream's mask as the optics embedded in his face take over. "Reintegration should only take a few kliks to run," Wheeljack says, resting one hand on Starscream's shoulder while the other hovers by the side of his face. Emotions flicker across Starscream's face in a series of rapid-fire twitches as things fall back into place.

Which Starscream cuts off a second later, before it finishes running. He grimaces in discomfort and then shakes himself, his wings flicking as he abruptly slithers off Wheeljack's chair. "Regardless, it will have to wait. I've been too long out of the office already; Rattrap will come hounding after me any moment, and I need to figure out which expression to fake," Starscream says, smoothly, not meeting Wheeljack's eyes. His hand traces the line of Wheeljack's arm for a second before he steps away and starts toward the door.

All in all? That all went…far better than expected. _Way_ better, in fact. Wheeljack spins in his chair to watch Starscream head out, but doesn't try to call him back - letting Starscream take the time he needs to settle himself works better than trying to interrupt. Before he can stop himself, though, that ache in his spark twists up again, and he calls after Starscream when he's halfway through the door. "Hey." 

Starscream's wings twitch, and he looks sidelong at Wheeljack, his face too stiff and guarded to frown. Despite everything, it sends a warm, wry pulse through Wheeljack. "Get some recharge tonight, okay?" he says, with absolutely no expectation that it'll happen. Not unless he visits for the night.

"Fusspot," Starscream says, snorting. One of his hands rests on the doorframe for a second, and he flexes his fingers before a rueful smile fills his face. " _Fine_. For the sake of my good friend Wheeljack," he adds, and it's not sarcastic enough to mask the warmth. Then he's out the door, the sound of his footsteps echoing down the corridor as he strides out of sight.

"Yeah, yeah. I'm just a worrier," Wheeljack says, and huffs a faint laugh as he turns back to his work. 


End file.
